Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance is one of the world’s largest international law firms, and family offices and private wealth clients engage it primarily for complex cross-border legal work rather than day-to-day operational support. The firm’s relevance to family office principals centers on its capacity to advise on high-stakes transactions, structuring, tax, and regulatory matters across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. With over 170 tax advisors worldwide, the tax group is among the largest of any single law firm, which matters when a family office is executing a multi-jurisdictional investment, succession event, or asset transfer.

The practice areas most directly applicable to family office mandates include:

• Cross-border tax structuring and international transactional tax advice
• Employment, incentives, and pensions work for family-owned operating businesses
• Private equity and real estate transaction support
• Global financial markets advisory and capital markets structuring
• Corporate finance, M&A, and restructuring across established international offices

The firm operates from offices across Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, with named presence in jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. For family offices with operating businesses, complex holdco structures, or active deal pipelines across multiple regions, the geographic coverage reduces the coordination cost of using multiple local counsel. Clifford Chance is positioned for engagements where legal complexity and jurisdictional breadth are the primary criteria, not cost efficiency. Smaller family offices or those with straightforward domestic legal needs are unlikely to find the firm’s offering appropriately sized. Pricing is not disclosed publicly and is expected to reflect the firm’s position at the top of the international legal market.